Mark Pope has suffered his worst loss at Kentucky thus far.

Pope’s No. 12-ranked Wildcats fell 89-79 at home to Arkansas Saturday afternoon — and it wasn’t an ordinary upset defeat.

The contest marked Pope’s first meeting with former Kentucky head coach John Calipari, whom Pope replaced after Calipari left for Arkansas last April.

“You know, this is a journey for us,” Pope told reporters after the game. “This is not a coronation, this is a journey. We’re going to earn our way through it, and there’s going to be some pain on the way and certainly, for my guys tonight it was super painful.”

Arkansas was uncharacteristically elite from 3-point range on Saturday, hitting 52% of such shots and forcing 14 Kentucky turnovers while facing one of the best home court advantages at Rupp Arena.

“It’s hard to win in here,” Calipari said. “I got to be honest with you. … I looked up a couple of times and I thought we were losing because I kept looking at Kentucky instead of Arkansas. … It’s 15 years here.”

Calipari — who led the Wildcats to a 410-123 record, four Final Four appearances and a National Championship between 2009-24 — has struggled a bit in his first campaign with the Razorbacks.

Saturday’s triumph over Kentucky marked just the second conference win for 13-8 Arkansas.

“We needed to win a game,” Calipari said. “It didn’t matter who it was against.”

While Calipari got to flex on his ex-program Saturday in his highly anticipated return, former BYU head coach Pope said he didn’t feel any extra pressure or distractions leading up to the dramatic matchup.

“This is every game, right? That’s the beauty of Kentucky, right? It’s every night is the biggest game ever,” Pope said. “If we go on the road, it’s the biggest game ever and we are really blessed to have the greatest fan base in the world and so every night here is the biggest game ever. I think our guys are pretty used to that.”

With the loss, Kentucky sits at 4-4 against conference opponents within the jam-packed SEC.

“We are a really good team,” Pope said. “We have guys that are really, really competing. We’ve got some guys that are growing in the process, because they need to step up and be better for us. We have guys in the process doing that and we are all doing it while playing great teams and having two or three successes and having some setbacks, and it’s awesome.”